O Come Let Us Adore Him!
Finding Time to Adore God in a Busy World
O Come Let Us Adore Him
We’ve sung the words a thousand times: “O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant… O come let us adore Him.” We envy the shepherds who actually saw the baby Jesus, and returned with a message of joy that pierced the midnight air. We can’t join them in Bethlehem, but thankfully, we can adore Jesus right where we are, for today He is at the right hand of the Father. That’s why the invitation is to all of us—“O come let us adore Him.”
But how do we “adore Him?”
“This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me….” Jesus said of the religious types of His day. To put it in modern terms, “You sing the right songs, you recite the proper prayers and you attend the right services… but your heart isn’t in it.”
Words are no substitute for the heart. That part of us that no one sees is what is most important to Him. Adoration is first and foremost an attitude of delightful worship, that our love for Christ lies at the core of our lives.
We so casually associate worship with church attendance that is it easy to get the impression they are one and the same. But Jesus told the woman of Samaria that the time had come when worship was not a matter of location, but was to be done “in spirit and in truth.”
We are to worship “in spirit”—that is, worship is a matter of personal desire and lifestyle. Take this from my heart to yours: if we are not adoring the Christ during the week, we most assuredly will not adore Him on Sunday.
Then Jesus said it was a matter of truth, the truth about God and our personal honesty about who we are in His presence. We can have many discussions about whether worship should be “traditional” or “contemporary,” but the real question is whether worship is honest or dishonest; is it from the mouth or from the heart?
We adore what is most precious to us. The miser adores his wealth; the evolutionist might adore his knowledge. We all have what C.S. Lewis called an “overwhelming first.” The New Testament teaches that this is the spot that should be reserved for Jesus. Adoration is our privilege, but it is also our obligation. He is worthy to be “first.”
Experience teaches us that it is almost impossible to seriously adore Christ at Christmastime. As long as we are consumed by getting and giving, we simply have neither the time nor the inclination to adore the One whose birthday we celebrate. We will be content with singing about adoration rather than doing it.
But among us will be a small number who actually rid their hearts of rivals; there are those who will refocus their lifestyles and take the time to bow before the now triumphant Christ. There were many shepherds out on the hills of Judea, but only a few were invited to the stable. Now they beckon us to join their company. They are asking us to remember that Christmas is not about us, but about Jesus.
Let’s accept their invitation and hurry to “Adore Him!”
